44 LECTURE II. 



lime, when there were large marble quarries within a 

 comparatively short distance. I therefore believe that I 

 am the first European who has entered that region. But 

 now they have the Bible in their own language, it is the 

 fashionable language, and the missionary has no difficulty 

 in communicating with them; thus shewing that the 

 hand of Providence has been at work. 



When I was at Loanda, I was laid up with the fevers 

 of the country, and being very weak, Captain Beding- 

 field, with whom I was upon intimate terms, strongly 

 persuaded me to go home, offering a free passage ; 

 however, I having brought the twenty-seven men from 

 Sekeletu, had no desire to leave them ; and commit- 

 ting certain papers and maps to the care of that officer, 

 bade him farewell. Soon after, I received intelligence 

 that the ship had gone down off Madeira, and my 

 papers with it. Several lives were lost, but my friend 

 was saved; but probably had I gone with the ship, I 

 should have been drowned; and had I, on the other 

 hand, first travelled eastward, I should have gone in 

 the midst of the skirmishes that were then going on 

 between the Portuguese and the Kafirs, and might have 

 been cut off among them. Even when I travelled in that 

 direction, I was in some danger; but when I said I was 

 an Englishman, I was allowed to pass. I was told that 

 if I went to the East, the people who were for the support 

 of the Portuguese government would perhaps kill me; I 

 said that I loved a black man as well as a white man. I 



